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Websites of the Departmental Archives

(01) AinCapital: Bourg-en-Bresse.
Archives Numériques Départementales de l'Ain. Online: parish registers, civil registers, censuses. Wonderfully they also have put up the Tables de Succession, (lists of those who died and whether or not they left a will) and the Matricules, (military recruitment documents) for some communes. Being added in stages are the all-important notarial document registers.

(02) AisneCapital: Laon.
On a very nice site that works well: parish and civil registrations, land records and maps, and many images of historical and genealogical value. There is a nice section on genealogy to help one get started. Additionally, it is possible via a different search page to see all documentation relating to a particular commune.

(03) AllierCapital : Moulins
The parish and civil registrations for over 300 communes are now online and free. One must click an agreement form before access is allowed. Nice site.

(05) Hautes-Alpes Capital: Gap.
Online: parish and civil registers, marriage banns, ten-year indices. Incredibly helpful people when contacted by e-mail; they really go out of their way to help further one's research.

(08) Ardennes Capital: Charleville-Mézières. Online: the ten-year indices with a list of all communes, land records, parish registers and civil registers from the 16th century to 1890. Military conscription lists from 1867 to 1921.

(09) AriègeCapital: Foix. Finally! Online: Parish and civil registrations from 1551 to 1892, with ten-year indices up to 1902, and military conscription lists from 1884 to 1918.

(10) AubeCapital: Troyes. Online: ten-year indices, post cards of various towns and villages, land records. NEW! Parish and civil registrations from 1552 to 1892 are now online. EXCELLENT ADDITION: a surname index to the registrations -- with some 200,000 names!

(11) AudeCapital: Carcassonne. Online: parish and civil registrations from 1547 to 1872 and some ten-year indices. Just up: military conscription lists.

(12) AveyronCapital: Rodez. New!!! Online: parish and civil registrations from the 16th to the end of the 19th century.

(14) CalvadosCapital: Caen. DIRE! DIRE! DIRE news: all of the parish and civil records and the ten-year indices and annual indices have just been put online BUT there is a charge to see them. It is not much, but it still is there and we consider this to be very bad form. The site has left some interesting pictures of the Normandy invasion free to view.

(15) CantalCapital: Aurillac. Online: parish and civil registers, ten-year indices, censuses, alphabetic indices to military enlistments, photographs, AND notarial records and Holocaust records that relate to Cantal! In 2010, the website won a prize for the way it is possible for users to index collaboratively the civil registrations.

(16) CharenteCapital: Angoulême. Online: census records for 1842 to 1872, land records, teachers' notebooks, church inventories, old post cards of local towns, villages and sites. NEW! Parish and civil registrations are now online, but there is a charge to view them.

(18) CherCapital: Bourges. As with many, but not all, you must create an account. This will gain you access to parish and civil registrations, censuses, maps, military enlistment registers and indices to them.

(19) CorrèzeCapital: Tulle. Online: ten-year indices from 1802 to 1902, parish and civil registrations for all communes from their beginnings to 1902, EXCEPT for Brive-la-Gaillarde (see their own website: http://archives.brive.fr), census returns from 1906 to 1936, military recruitment lists, alphabetic death and will registrations to 1940, maps.

(2A) Corse-du-SudCapital: Ajaccio. Goofy website. You will have to do some copy-paste work. For the military conscription lists from 1859 to 1918, those of the Garde Mobile from 1865 to 1870: http://www1.arkhenum.fr/
ad_corsedusud_matricules/
For the newly up census returns: http://www1.arkhenum.fr/
ad_corsedusud_recensements/#
There is also a very nice surname list. Ten-year indices and parish registrations are expected to be online by September 2014. The archives of the city of Bonifacio, dating from 1682, are now online at
http://www.bonifacio-mairie.fr/corse-du-sud/bonifacio.php?menu=57

(23) CreuseCapital: Guéret. New website! Online: Parish and civil registrations, maps, posters from the Second World War, census returns, military recruitment lists, and -- very nice -- alphabetic indices to inheritances.

(24) DordogneCapital: Périgueux. Online: historic maps, ten-year indices, parish and civil registrations and census returns. These last are due to be indexed by FamilySearch, so keep checking that website as well.

(25) DoubsCapital: Besançon. Online: Ten-year indices. To use the search facility, one must register, but there is no charge.

(29) FinistèreCapital: Quimper. Online: Maps, parish and civil registrations census returns, military recruitment lists, all a bit awkward to use. Very helpful staff. Parish registrations from 1772 to 1909 have been indexed on FamilySearch.

(30) GardCapital: Nîmes. Difficulties abound. Online: No genealogical records are online at the website of the archives. However, TéléArchives at Brozer.fr now have the municipal archives of Nîmes and a large number of archives for Gard.

(31) Haute-GaronneCapital: Toulouse. Online: Land records, parish and civil registers, military recruitment lists, marriage contracts from Toulouse from 1501 to 1739, censuses, insinuations from 1693 to 1790. The site is maddening in that images cannot be adjusted; there is no possibility to zoom in or out. The 1872 and 1886 census returns for Toulouse are being indexed by FamilySearch.

(32) Gers Capital: Auch. Online: Finding aids, historic maps, military conscription lists and census returns. Parish and civil registrations are not expected to be online before late 2015.

(33) GirondeCapital: Bordeaux. Online: Transcriptions of parish registers, 182 registers of the Admiralty of Guyenne, a list of communes for which the records are being scanned. Expected date when the civil registers will be online: 2010. The ten-year indices are online now.

(39) JuraCapital: Lons-le-Saunier. This has to be one of the most helpful archives in the country. Online: maps, postcards and historic photographs. Parish and civil registrations are scheduled for 2016.

(40) LandesCapital: Mont-de-Marsan. Lots of problems with this site, and many efforts to repair them, finally leading to a new site. Online: Parish and civil registrations, military recruitment lists, maps, town meeting minute books.

(43) Haute-LoireCapital: Le Puy-en-Velay. Online: Nice new website which has parish and civil registrations, ten-year indices to same, and the beautiful documents of the Chaise-Dieu Abbey.

(44) Loire-AtlantiqueCapital: Nantes. Online: Parish registers, civil registers, censuses, land records, maps, old post cards, notarial records, military enlistment registers, WITH a surname index to them! Do not waste your time contacting by post or e-mail, as they brusquely refuse to be of any help at all.

(45) LoiretCapital: Orléans. Online: Civil registrations from 1833 to 1902 are gradually being put online. About one third of all communes have been added. However, there are some that will never be online, for they were destroyed during the Second World War. Many communes have their own websites with their parish and civil registrations found online there.

(46) LotCapital: Cahors. Online: Parish and civil registrations to 1902, including clerk's copies, census records, succession tables, military registers. This site has had some trouble but seems to be working properly as of November 2012.

(47) Lot-et-GaronneCapital: Agen. Much improved! Online now: civil registrations of the 19th century, census returns, many maps and land records, photographs, old post cards, unique funds of local history and customs, and the recordings of the accounts of some Spanish refugees.

(48) LozèreCapital: Mende. An all new website! Online: the parish and civil registers from the 17th century to 1902, photographs, maps, post cards, town histories, insinuations. Unusually, the municipal archives of the capitol city are at the same site. Nice little bit of cooperation, that.

(50) MancheCapital: Saint-Lô. Online: Historic maps, parish and civil registrations and ten-year indices, military conscription lists. Click on moteur de recherche, then on état civil. There is a nifty little video explaining how to use the search engine. Paris registrations from 1533 to 1906 for some towns have been indexed on FamilySearch.

(53) MayenneCapital: Laval. Online: parish and civil registers from the 16th century to 1882, ten-year indices, a data base created by volunteers of the details from the marriages of the 19th century, military registers, census lists from 1836 to 1906, land records, transcriptions of marginal notes from the parish registers. Mayenne is acknowledged as the gold standard of departmental archives online.

(54) Meurthe-et-MoselleCapital: Nancy. Online: parish and civil registers up to 1882, land records. There is a warning that records for Toul are incomplete, owing to a fire there in 1939.

(55) MeuseCapital: Bar-le-Duc. Online: The parish and civil registers are now online, as are military conscription lists and some censuses.

(57) MoselleCapital: Metz. Online: an extensive site. The first phase of putting records online has begun with the parish registrations prior to 1793 for about 500 towns and villages. Civil registrations will not be online before 2015.

(62) Pas-de-CalaisCapital: Arras. Online: Lots of advice, plus ten-year indices to parish and civil registrations up to 1912, census records from 1820 to 1886, military recruitment records through 1921, land records.

(64) Pyrénées-AtlantiquesCapital: Pau. Now online: land records, finding aids, parish and civil registrations, notarial records. One must complete a short registration form, but the site is free to use.

(65) Haute-PyrénéesCapital: Tarbes. Online: no genealogical records are online. However, the city of Tarbes has put up its parish and civil registers from 1611 to 1909 on www.archives.tarbes.fr

(67) Bas-RhinCapital: Strasbourg. Online: parish and civil registrations and census records, now up to 1912. Also a very interesting discussion of an early 19th century manuscript of a history of Jews in Alsace, by Jacob Meyer. A new website has just been launched.

(68) Haut-RhinCapital: Colmar. Online: the heraldic devices for each commune, a list of those who died in the two World Wars, a list of all of the mairies (town halls). NEW! Civil registrations from 1798 are now up. Also, ten-year indices and lists of Jewish names. Serious teething problems abound; the site is incredibly slow and often does not work. We predict a crash.

(69) Rhône Capital: Lyon. Online: Censuses from 1836, parish and civil registrations from 1527, military recruitment registers, maps, indices to notarial records, a very large collection on orphans. Collaborative indexing of both registrations and censuses is making this site incredibly useful. Rhône is the first department to allow the images of their ten-year indices and of their parish and civil registrations to appear on www.genealogie.com, though why you would pay there when you can get it free here is a mystery.

(70) Haute-SaôneCapital: Vesoul. Online: Land records, census records, civil and parish registrations, conscription registers, bureaux de succession registers. Exceedingly helpful staff. Ten-year indices for many communes can be found on the website of the local genealogy group, Serv@nc'nautes :
www.servancnaute.fr

(71) Saône-et-LoireCapital: Mâcon. Online: land records, ten-year indices, parish and civil registers to 1902, censuses from 1836 to 1901, cahiers de doléances, post cards, and a nice facility to see all that is available for each town.

(73) SavoieCapital: Chambéry. Online : maps, some ten-year indices, census records from the 16th to 20th centuries, parish and civil registers from 1501 to 1793 and from 1815 to 1860. Also: some old newspapers, indices to maps, posters, etc.

(74) Haute-SavoieCapital: Annecy. Online: NEW! Parish and civil registrations, censuses and military conscriptions from 1860 to 1940, and maps.

(75) ParisOnline: the existing and reconstructed parish and civil registers are online, with the identical system to that used in the archives, which is not the easiest. New!: The military recruitment registers from 1875-1909 and the long, long lists of the first names of children accepted into care from 1742-1909.

(76) Seine-MaritimeCapital: Rouen. Parish and civil registrations up to 1912 and in some cases up to 1935. Promised soon are maps. Fingers crossed for passenger lists of ships sailing from Le Havre!

(78) Yvelines and the old Seine et OiseCapital: Versailles. Online: ten-year indices, parish and civil registrations, military recruitment, censuses, land records, cahiers de doléances, community monographs (histories). A very nice site, but as of mid-2011, it does not work with Safari.

(81) TarnCapital: Albi. Online: some parish registers, civil registers, ten-year indices, land records. It is necessary to register to use the site. Poor Tarn has recently had the sad distinction of becoming the first French archives site to be the victim of an attack by Anonymous, during which access to civil registrations and other digitized records was blocked. This seems to have been in protest of the planned construction of a dam at Sivens.

(82) Tarn-et-GaronneCapital: Montauban. Online: Ten-year indices, civil and parish registrations dating back to 1590. New! The local copies of parish registrations, giving an important supplement, filling many gaps in the central administration's sets of registrations. Excellent!!!

(83) VarCapital: Toulon. Online: land records, censuses, ten-year indices, medieval notarial records, architectural records cahiers de doléances, records about the liberation of Var during WWII. The site has been recently improved and cleaned up.

(86) VienneCapital: Poitiers. Online: parish and civil registers (now up to 1912), land records, census lists. Interesting: A collection of notes on cards made during the 1950s extracting further information on Protestants, abandoned children and more. ALSO, the military registrations from 1867-1908.

(87) Haute-VienneCapital: Limoges. Online: Land records and finding aids only. Latest word is that the parish and civil registrations could be on-line around the end of 2014. The story is that there seems to be a problem of damp and fungus on the records.

(88) VosgesCapital: Épinal. Newly online: parish registers from 1526, civil registers to 1905, the ten-year indices, and recently the censuses for the years from 1886 to 1906. Very nicely done, with easy printing.

(90) Territoire de BelfortCapital: Belfort. A very nice site with plenty online: parish and civil registrations, censuses, military registrations, and historic maps. Additionally, local archivists have created an excellent site of indexed data from the parish and civil registrations. It is a bilingual site:
http://lisa90.org

(91) EssonneCapital: Évry. Online: Parish and civil registers, censuses, historic maps, and 184 village and town histories written for the 1900 Paris Expo, as well as indices to notaires' minutes.

(92) Hauts-de-SeineCapital: Nanterre. Online: maps; ten-year indices to the civil registrations through 1912; civil registrations from 1792 to 1912; census records for 11 towns, from 1891 to 1911. Expected in 2015: further census records and the parish registrations.

(93) Seine-Saint-DenisCapital: Bobigny. Online: no genealogical records are online, but there are lots of postcards and photos.

(95) Val-d'OiseCapital: Cergy-Pontoise. Online: Finally! With a lovely new website: parish registrations from the 16th century to 1792, civil registrations from 1793-1900, ten-year indices, and census returns from 1917 to 1936.

March 2014

31 March 2014

Further to our last on the Municipal Archives of Brive-la-Gaillarde, we report today on another treasure found therein: le certificat de bonne vie et moeurs, a certificate confirming that a person is of good morals and behaviour. This is, essentially, a character reference. Today, a document of the same title is issued in Belgium by the local administration where a person lives. In France, the modern equivalent is the extrait de casier judiciaire, the copy of one's criminal record or, what is to be preferred, the proof that one does not have a criminal record.

In the past, a potential employer or spouse or business partner would write to a previous employer and/or to the mayor of the town where the person in question was born or lived. Quite a few mairies, (town halls), kept the requests they received for a certificat de bonne vie et moeurs and copies of their replies, along with those they received in response to their own requests. The Municipal Archives of Brive-la-Gaillarde have a small collection of these.

They vary greatly in the amount of genealogical information that they contain, but generally, a certificat de bonne vie et moeurs will give the following:

The full name of the person in question

His or her age

His or her profession and/or place of employment

The names of his or her parents and whether or not they were married

The parents' address

A statement as to whether or not the person in question is of good character

A complete physical description of the person

One written in 1848 for a university professor named Jean Victor Delbos is given below:

As these could have been requested any number of times during a person's life, there may be many opportunities to find one written for your French ancestor. If you know the name of the town where your ancestor was born, or if you know of a town where your ancestor lived and worked, you might check their municipal archives for such a collection to see if the mayor requested or wrote such a reference about your ancestor.

Should your ancestor have been a wastrel or worse, or merely on someone's wrong side, then prepare yourself for unpleasantness, for you may find a letter of refusal to give a certificat de bonne vie et moeurs with plenty of detail as to bad behaviour. We came across a pair of letters, written as late as 1936, in which a sad tale is told. The first was written by Josephine, a single mother of a toddler, who claimed to have been abandoned by her husband and who asked the mayor to write a certificat de bonne vie et moeurs to be sent to a person who had agreed to employ her. The reply came from the police inspector and stated that she was a divorcée; it also claimed that she had abandoned her child at her mother's house, that the mother complained about it constantly and that Josephine was of very low morals indeed. Neither gave any details of use to the genealogist researching the fallen Josephine.

Gossip? Back-scratching exchange of favours? A true account of a person's moral standing? Whatever relation to the truth such character references had, they are certainly interesting and may also be informative.

26 March 2014

We have been on a little jaunt to Brive-la-Gaillarde, in the south west. We were keen to visit the Archives municipales which, though they have an excellent website (parish and civil registrations, post cards, etc.), have some rather interesting documents that are not yet digitized. As well, we seem to have given unintentionally bad press to municipal archives generally, for a few of you, Dear Readers, responded to our scathing post on the Archives municipales de La Rochelle, (a victim which fully deserved every drop of our venom), by asking us if all municipal or communal archives should be considered as a waste of time.

Not at all. As with everything in life, mediocrity predominates, but some are quite good and others not so. It is not only money that makes a difference, but a city's or town's commitment to preservation of its historical documents. Some care; some cannot be bothered. Brive-la-Gaillard cares and, though small, has a comparatively big website, a good service, and an enigmatically placed sculpture out front (photo above).

The Reading Room is the tiniest we have yet seen, seating about eight people of average size and extremely good manners. The staff are very helpful and know their collection thoroughly. At least one of them also may have had training to a high level in dealing with clients suffering from senile dementia.

Some municipal archives, and this is such a case, have documents normally found in the Departmental Archives. They also have out of the ordinary collections of their own. At times, what they have is in better condition and more complete than can be found elsewhere.

Internal passports, for example, are difficult to find, and if found are usually in shreds. This is because they were given for a short period only, had to be shown often and were marked by every passing authority equipped with that bureaucrat's sword of honour, the rubber stamp. Brive-la-Gaillarde has not only some beautifully preserved internal passports but a very nice register as well.

In the register can be found page after page of entries for the passports issued in Brive. The full name of the recipient is given, as is the physical description, age, place of birth and sometimes more. The example below turns out to be the record of an internal passport issued to the well-documented émigré from Limoges, Stephen Grellet.

The folder containing internal passports is not large but contains, as noted, beauties. Below is the passport of a weaver, born in the department of Arriège, and who lived in Algiers.

The real treat is on the back, showing all of the places he had travelled in France:

The majority of the internal passports in this file are for tinkers and others who wandered the country selling wares, colporteurs, a group of people who are often extremely difficult to trace in one's genealogy, yet here they are. Should you have such a one among your French ancestors, and have any idea of the general area where he or she travelled, you might wish to check the internal passports collections of the municipal archives of the region. If they are as good as the collection at Brive, you may find joy.

21 March 2014

The French Republican Calendar was in effect from September, 1793, beginning with year two, to the end of December, 1805. We have written about it before and that post is given in Our Book. We explained the twelve months of thirty days each and their names being based on the weather and agricultural activities in the north of France. In order to eradicate the custom days being associated with saints, each day was associated with something to do with nature or agriculture. It was actually quite a beautiful and logical creation, but it did not stick and most of it -- especially the names of the days -- is forgotten now.

Yet, as much as the English love their countryside or the North Americans love their wilderness, France loves her farmers, and the Republican Calendar is evidence of that. The nineteenth century French novelist, Eugène Le Roy, wrote a charming book about nature's cycles through the year, using the Republican Calendar, l'Année Rustique en Périgord, which we would like to share with you from time to time.

The year begins with the Vernal Equinox, today, and the month of Germinal, or germination, the time when seeds begin to sprout. It is a time, Le Roy writes, when all the trees of the hedges are in flower -- poplar, ash, elm, field maple, Damson plum. We note that it is also when the very French boxwood -- when not pruned, as it usually is -- flowers with a sweet and heavenly scent.

Le Roy tells of the peasant and his wife, who wears heavy canvas clothing, dig the soil around their grape vines. They gather the trimmed off vine shoots into a little bundle called a javelou, which will be used in the autumn to stir the batter for crêpes, then tossed into the fire to help warm the house. His stoic peasants of the Périgord "have a hard life but are healthy and strong". They eat well: chestnuts, fruits, walnuts, truffles. They feed red wheat to their pigs to fatten them and fry the bacon in walnut oil.

He then waxes unbelievably lyrical about the glories of the peasant-owner's life and the evils of great landownership, quoting Montesquieu at last : "It is not enough, in a good democracy, for the parcels of land owned to be equal; they must be small." Le Roy was a firm believer in the principles of the Revolution, specially that of equality, and one could write a small thesis on authors with similar convictions who clung to the Republican Calendar in one way or another. Zola's Germinal was not, after all, entitled Germination.

Coming back from politics to nature, Le Roy notes that the true sign of Spring's definitive arrival is the call of the cuckoo, which, by the way, one can still hear often in France (we read it is no longer so in Britain and cuckoos are confined to clocks in California). He ends with a local proverb about listening for the cuckoo's call, in the Périgordin dialect of Occitan:

15 March 2014

Many apologies for the lateness of this post. We were out gardening a few days ago and fell down a hole. The period of recuperation has brought us an interesting discovery: one of those websites created for love or obsession or both that freely share genealogical information in an intelligible format.

Just so with Claude Rossignol's Primo-Arrivants des Iles des Mascareignes, about the first European - almost exclusively about the French -- settlers in the Mascarene Islands. While we have written about the parish and civil registrations of La Réunion being accessible via the website of the Archives nationales d'outre-merand those of Ile Maurice, or Mauritius, being accessible via the National Archives of that Republic, struggling between the two sites has been less than ideal for those who are researching ancestors whose families may have lived on both of the islands.

Monsieur Rossignol's site brings succor. While, naturally, it has links to the two national archives sites just mentioned, it also lists the names of all known first immigrants, with the details of their births, marriages and deaths, where known. It lists sources, and shows corrections to some of them. It has a long list of valued contributors. For each of the two main islands, there is an alphabetical list of immigrants. Perhaps of most value are the interactive maps which link back to these lists, especially that showing where in France the immigrants originated. If you cannot find your Mascareigne ancestor here, Monsieur Rossignol gives links to the sites of those who might help: fora, historical societies and genealogy associations of the region.

As is often the case with personal sites such as this, there is a bit of abandon with the use of Flash in the design, but we have seen worse -- showers of twinkling stars over a corps de ballet of dancing teddy bears and smirking fairies with innumerable flags stampeding round the borders. No, by comparison, Primo-Arrivants des Iles des Mascareignes's two scrolls of names may be annoying but are sedate. A fine site that will be of great help to a small but frustrated number, we imagine.

09 March 2014

March being Women's History Month (in the United States) and yesterday having been International Women's Day (most countries), we have been reading others' blogs about researching female ancestors with, forgive us, a trace of smugness. The subject is nearly always covered with the inclusion of adjectives of despair: "difficult", "tricky", "impossible", "absolute brick wall", "invisible". Not so for your French ancestress.

We do not mean to imply that women somehow have more rights in France than elsewhere. Not at all. In fact, according to a recent report by the World Economic Forum on the gap between men's and women's rights and privileges in various countries -- the narrower the gap being the better -- France does not even appear in the list of the top ten countries (nor do the United States, Great Britain, Canada or Australia). If school marks were being given, France would get a B minus or so. Just this year, after much campaigning by women, the number of women buried in the Panthéon, that mausoleum of the country's worthies, will be doubled...to four out of more than seventy. No, the reason that it is so much easier to trace a female ancestor in French records is not because of any sense of women's equality, but because France has a somewhat over-developed sense of the need to document individual citizens' lives.

Very soon after the French Revolution, in 1794, the law known as Loi du 6 fructidor an II was passed, stating, among many other things, that "no citizen may use any surname or first name other than those given at birth." Since that time women's birth names have been used on all official and legal documentation. At the same time, a married woman probably would have used her husband's surname socially and would have been known by this nom d'usage of Madame Quelquechose to her friends and acquaintances. This means that the best way to find records and genealogical data on a female French ancestor is to search for her using her birth name when searching official or notarial documents and her married name when searching letters, diaries or private archives.

Not so long ago, the French government banned the use of titles for women that indicate their marital status; Mademoiselle will no longer appear in official documents or correspondence and Madame will be used exclusively. In the past, the nom d'usage often appeared on some official documents as the Livret de famille or the carte d'identité, even though this was illegal. The government is currently working on a law to narrow that gender gap which will ban any appearance of the nom d'usage on any document unless a woman specifically requests it (the bill goes quite a bit further on women's rights; the French are staunch believers that legislation can change society). Future researchers will have an even easier time of it.

So, each time you come across an ancestor who was French -- whether female or male -- rejoice, for your brick walls may be fewer.

03 March 2014

For those of you who were upset by a recent television advertisement for a soft drink, which was played during a broadcast of an annual, rumbustious, sporting match and which depicted scenes of life in America while a beloved song that is not the national anthem of that country was sung by charming young girls in a few different languages, we say: Ho! Try France! For centuries, France has been determined to suppress the other languages spoken in the land, some of which, as in the little case above, were spoken here long before the now dominant language. The superficial rationale was that everyone needed to be able to speak the country's official language; the reality has been that that was not enough: all other languages -- and their cultures and possible use as code in rebellion -- were to be obliterated. It is ever so that dull is the opposite of diversity.

France has forgone empire and is now part of Europe and the European Union deemed as long ago as 1992, with its Charter for Regional or Minority Languages, that said languages should be protected, permitted and preserved. France ignored it. There were repeated slaps on the governmental wrist. At long last, at the end of January, a draft law of compliance pushed by two Breton deputies in the French National Assembly was approved by a large majority. Those of the extreme right wing party voted against it; the Minister for Culture explained it to a cynical journalist who asked: "Why bother? Why not just teach English?"

There are seventy-five regional and minority languages on France's list and another fifty-four for the overseas departments and territories. Many are discussed here. Their new liberation can only be good for your genealogical research on your French ancestors, Dear Readers. If your family insists an ancestor were French but all the old letters seem to have been in German, you may now have an easier time finding and checking Alsacien or Francique dictionaries for the words used and thus narrow the geographical range where you would search. With more publicity, classes and teaching materials in these languages, you might even be able to study the Saintongeais or Cauchois that your ancestors spoke.

Now, we must wait to see if Orangina will find some bi-lingual children to sing the Marseillaise in 129 languages.

Other Ways to Subscribe

Books on Genealogy in France

Masson, Agnès, editor: Sur les traces de vos ancêtres à ParisProduced and published by the Archives de Paris, this is a 2007 update of the 1997 publication of the same title. It is, in our opinion, the best book available on genealogical research in Paris. ISBN 978-2-86075-011-0 (*****)

Chefs-d'oeuvres by Our Dear Readers

The Boleat Family 1560-1912Research by Marc Boleat on the origins of two brothers who moved from Brittany to Jersey in the 1870s, and their descendants. It will be of particular interest to anyone researching relatives in Jersey with a French origin.

Récits et SouvenirsThe mémoires of Henri Soudée and of his parents. Soldiers, Communards, and immigrants to Martinique and the United States, their tales are fascinatingly gathered by our Dear Reader, Françoise Becker.